palliative care

portrait in dorm room

Using the Internet for good

Terrah Foster Akard is helping children facing serious and life-threatening illness create a digital record of their lives, and measuring the impact the practice has on their emotional wellbeing.

Vigil Volunteers program expanding to Medical ICU

After a successful 2016 pilot in the 16-bed Palliative Care Unit, the Vanderbilt Vigil Volunteers (V3) program — which pairs a volunteer with dying patients who either have no known family or friends, or whose family and friends are unable to be with them — is expanding into the Medical Intensive Care Unit (MICU) in early 2017.

New VUMC educational series focuses on palliative care

A new series of lunch and learn events at Vanderbilt University Medical Center (VUMC) is designed to teach nurses and other medical professionals best practices for providing palliative care to patients at their bedsides.

New initiative pairs volunteers with palliative care patients

As a nurse working with critically ill patients with orders to not resuscitate, Rebecca Hixson, R.N., has often lingered in a patient’s room to complete her routine charting if she felt they were nearing death and no family or friends were around. But Hixson now hopes a new volunteer program at Vanderbilt University Medical Center (VUMC) will mean these patients will always have someone by their side at the end of life.

VUH debuts new unit dedicated to palliative care

When Mohana Karlekar, M.D., talks with patient families, she almost always asks what they know about palliative care, and the answer is almost always the same — “Not much.”

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